petrea_mitchell (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
petrea_mitchell) wrote2020-07-13 07:38 pm
petrea_mitchell) wrote2020-07-13 07:38 pm
Entry tags:
Gen Con scheduled
At 12pm Eastern on the dot, just when the countdown reached zero, I clicked the "Submit Wishlist" button and
...number 1189, yikes. At that moment I didn't think I had any hope of getting into the PFS special.
It took 16 minutes for me to reach the front of the queue, and as it worked out, only half the tables in the tier I was aiming for had filled. So I did get a seat. In fact, I got into everything I was hoping for.
The next order of business after paying for the games that had an event charge was finding where to view my schedule chronologically. This is the one part where the design of the site falls down; someone on Discord eventually spread the word that you get to it by going to your name in the top menu bar, ignoring the dropdown menu, and just clicking on the name. Not obvious at all.
Everything else about the site bears the hallmarks of having been repeatedly refined over the years. Note, in the screenshot above, that the opening time includes date, time, timezone, and a counter for people who don't want to try the timezone arithmetic, leaving no ambiguity. The events list was nice and searchable and filterable, and adding things to the wishlist was easy.
I'm signed up for 10 things other than the PFS special, including an infamous 1985 boardgame, a couple sessions of traditional Native American games, and some panels on various aspects of science and gaming. Everything ends before the start of the Worldcon day, except for the special, which overlaps it by one hour.
Now, here is the full list of platforms that these events are spread across: Tabletopia, Zoom, Sovranti, Twitch, Discord, Roll20, Jitsi, Tabletop Simulator. That's eight different ones, only three of which I have accounts on (Discord, Zoom, Roll20), and two of which I'd never heard of a couple weeks ago (Jitsi, Sovranti). Obviously the attempt to encourage people onto a smaller collection of platforms did not work.
...number 1189, yikes. At that moment I didn't think I had any hope of getting into the PFS special.
It took 16 minutes for me to reach the front of the queue, and as it worked out, only half the tables in the tier I was aiming for had filled. So I did get a seat. In fact, I got into everything I was hoping for.
The next order of business after paying for the games that had an event charge was finding where to view my schedule chronologically. This is the one part where the design of the site falls down; someone on Discord eventually spread the word that you get to it by going to your name in the top menu bar, ignoring the dropdown menu, and just clicking on the name. Not obvious at all.
Everything else about the site bears the hallmarks of having been repeatedly refined over the years. Note, in the screenshot above, that the opening time includes date, time, timezone, and a counter for people who don't want to try the timezone arithmetic, leaving no ambiguity. The events list was nice and searchable and filterable, and adding things to the wishlist was easy.
I'm signed up for 10 things other than the PFS special, including an infamous 1985 boardgame, a couple sessions of traditional Native American games, and some panels on various aspects of science and gaming. Everything ends before the start of the Worldcon day, except for the special, which overlaps it by one hour.
Now, here is the full list of platforms that these events are spread across: Tabletopia, Zoom, Sovranti, Twitch, Discord, Roll20, Jitsi, Tabletop Simulator. That's eight different ones, only three of which I have accounts on (Discord, Zoom, Roll20), and two of which I'd never heard of a couple weeks ago (Jitsi, Sovranti). Obviously the attempt to encourage people onto a smaller collection of platforms did not work.